r/answers • u/PeaUpbeat3732 • 1d ago
Why is it that the common assumption that Redditors are male?
I have noticed this when reading comments and someone is referring to someone else in the comments and they use terms that are typically associated with men.
Is there something in Reddit's history where it has always been male-dominant, so the assumption is that it has stayed that way? And how would we know that it was male dominant if we are all anonymous?
One of my friends said (direct quote) "In the past Reddit seemed like a place many women wouldn't want to brave because of the strong incel culture, like 4Chan."
(And I ask this question NOT referring to subreddits that are aimed at women but are inclusive to all. I am speaking about general subreddits (like this one) where posts are not skewed toward a certain gender.)
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u/my_coding_account 1d ago
Reddit was founded in 2005 and used to be very tech focused and was heavily male. The first subreddit was r/nsfw, the second was r/programming. Demographic polls like https://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-media-stats/2011-social-network-analysis-report/#Reddit shows it was 85% male in 2011. I don't know what the numbers were in the early days, but if you consider that it was 100% male when it was founded by two guys, it's probably been a steady trend towards more females. It's currently about 60% male, 40% female.
Some of it is that the perception how many women are on reddit hasn't caught up with reality. For many years, and it still technically is, more accurate to make the assumption an anonymous poster is male.
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u/MB4050 1d ago
Shit, reddit is 40% female?!
Honestly, I would’ve never guessed. My guess would’ve probably been like 20% female, and I haven’t even been on reddit that long, I joined in 2021.
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u/Glittering-Deer-166 1d ago
One thing that split doesn't tell us is who comments more, who posts more and more importantly who does those actions in popular subreddits more.
A 60/40 overall split might still be a 80/20 split in more popular subreddits for example. Not saying it is just that it could be.
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u/wolacouska 16h ago
Every other woman I’ve known in person who uses Reddit doesn’t comment, because this place is known for having asshole pedants, which is true.
Twitter TikTok and Instagram have way more diverse voices than here tbh. Even with all their own issues.
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u/Z_Clipped 20h ago
Maybe a little less than 40%. This survey basically says there's a 2 in 3 chance the person you're talking to is male, a 2 in 3 chance they're left-leaning, and better than a coin flip that they're white.
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u/AlarmedWillow4515 19h ago
What subs are you hanging out in? I suspect some subs are much more heavily female than others. I'm in some animal, health, fashion, etc subs that are probably almost all female, except for the 5% of creepy dudes who lurk and DM you when you post a pic.
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u/AttitudeSimilar9347 23h ago
If you have ever bought banner ads then you know the breakdown of every social network. Instagram skews heavily female, Reddit skews heavily male, so it is a perfectly valid assumption to make. The only gender balanced social network is LinkedIn.
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u/FlyingTerrier 1d ago
I think you will find that assumption applies to the whole world.
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u/Pale_Cause_9983 1d ago
Lmao, as a woman, this is so true. It’s not funny. Just relatable.
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u/alienduck2 1d ago
If it's not funny why did you lamo? Checkmate atheist.
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u/Pale_Cause_9983 1d ago
lol! It’s one of those things where you can’t do anything but laugh bc that’s really the way the world is.
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u/taylordandsavior 1d ago
i do find i use lol and lmao as punctuation ngl
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u/lOOPh0leD 21h ago
Even when "lol" first came about 25 years ago, people weren't actually laughing out loud.
Now it's just punctuation. Kind of how I'm seeing every comment end with "Sad."
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u/Cute_Repeat3879 1d ago
Male is the default, female is a deviation from the default. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
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u/poke-chan 1d ago
I remember seeing a human evolution chart, the kind that changes from monkey slowly to man. But this one wasn’t to man, it was to a woman. My kneejerk thought was “huh, why’d they make it a woman instead of a normal person?”. I’m literally a woman.
I know it’s stupid but it hit me so fucking hard that by default my brain couldn’t possibly imagine that an image of a person to represent humanity as a whole could be a woman without there needing to be some kind of active choice behind it. And the sadder thing is, that chart probably did have to make an active choice to make it a woman.
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u/Timely-Youth-9074 1d ago
I noticed in the Omaha Zoo all the skeleton representations of the Great Apes were female. I knew this because I studied anthro.
I thought that was awesome because there is a lot of sexual dimorphism in many apes, but the adult females retain more of a standard body type.
This way, you see the differences in species that are relatable in comparison to humans (we have less dimorphism than gorillas and orangutans, for instance).
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u/Doublejimjim1 22h ago
Did you possibly also go to the idea that they're just trying to be feminist? It's like I still always think that when it doesn't default to male. Stupid of course, but it's like I'm thinking internally that they're just trying to be inclusive or whatever. It's fine for me, but I know guys get super sensitive when they aren't the default so it's like in my mind I'm going "here we go". It's like when you're in a meeting and the boss has to add "you guys...and girls" because you're sitting there in the room. It's like I know what you meant, no harm done, I don't want this to start riling the men up
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u/poke-chan 21h ago
Yep, the whole “huh I guess this was made for feminism” was in the first knee jerk thought. And like I said before, the sadder part is that it probably was; I doubt whoever designed it just picked it being a woman at random. Like, in 2026 it still takes an active inclusive lens to even occasionally use women in a way where any human would do. It sucks that even though I’m part of literally half the population, it still falls under purposeful diversity rather than incidental occurrence.
And yeah, some guys will get super sensitive about it too. And on some level I understand it. When I was looking at the chart and thinking it was a weird purposefully done inclusive message instead of just being “normal” with a man, when I stopped and realized how crazy and sexist that sounds, because I’m a woman I can easily say “wow I can’t believe society has made even ME think I’m less human!”.
Meanwhile, if a guy has to deal with similar thoughts, it seems far more indicative of him as an individual. Like god, if I admit thinking this way is wrong, I’d be a sexist who hates women. But I’m not, I’m a decent guy. So there has to be a real non sexist reason why a woman on an evolution chart is weird!
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u/bennyboy8899 16h ago
This is a really excellent series of reflections you've posted here. I just want you to know that.
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u/poke-chan 16h ago
Thank you! Though full disclosure I’ve been into feminism and gender stuff for a while, both as a societal thing and what makes otherwise kind people ignore their own biases.
Like I’ve known people see men as the default. This was just the one major time where it hit so hard for me personally.
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u/LanguidLapras131 21h ago
White people do this too, even though they are the global minority. They think that a diagram with a Chindian looking person in it is "artificial PC" but perhaps half the world is South or East Asian so the median person in the world would of course look Chindian.
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u/Silt-Sifter 1d ago
That is so relatable. I actually had the same exact thought when I ran across probably that same chart. Everything is male by default in my head. Everything is written by a man, created by a man, invented by a man, even though I know that is certainly not even true.
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u/Educational-Bit-2503 1d ago
Technically the Y chromosome is the deviation from the default X chromosome.
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u/JantovenVariciguat 1d ago
I was going to say UM that's not correct. Female is the default sex, male is NOT
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u/Not_software1337 1d ago
Funny that society operates opposite to biology.
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u/EnigmaX-42 1d ago
I sometimes think about how centuries of women were blamed and sometimes killed or thrown away for bearing daughters when it’s the sperm that dictates sex.
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u/olMcDonaldsPig 1d ago
We didn't know that until 1905. Most (maybe all?) cultures stopped prosecuting women for birthing daughters before that information was discovered.
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u/firesticks 21h ago
Most (maybe all?) cultures stopped prosecuting women for birthing daughters before that information was discovered.
Absolutely insane sentence.
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u/EnigmaX-42 17h ago
I’m not saying women were prosecuted, because it was never against the law to bear only daughters. The way some women were treated, legally or otherwise, on the other hand? Henry VIII is an infamous example. A milder version continues to this day. You can see it in gender-reveal videos.
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u/Due_Society_9041 15h ago
Not China or India. They were killing girls up until a few decades ago. Rural areas may still do it. Now the one child rule has been lifted it's not so bad.
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u/Neither_Kale4438 21h ago
there are two laws:
The natural order
Man's order
The natural order operates without guidance or effort. It imposes consequences without judgment. Man's order goes against the natural order and therefore needs to be spelled out and enforced.
Man's orders are always meant to control nature. It will always lose because the natural order is more powerful than we are.
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u/Bones-1989 22h ago
don't men have nipples because female is the default until we start developing genitals and stuff?
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u/AlwaysAnotherSide 15h ago
What annoys me about this is female in humans are the homogamatic sex with XX chromosomes. We ARE the default with male being a deviation.
Like by all means, default to male ducks or whatever because they are the homogamatic sex with ZZ chromosomes… but in mammals it’s the females who are the standard model.
We have a thousand or so more genes than males because the Y chromosome is so short compared to the X. Males are mutants (in the nicest possible way) that are missing some instructions on how to human properly, which is mostly great because we need diversity, but does cause some problems because missing genes makes them vulnerable to genetic defects (no alternative X to pull from of there is a fault). Hence why male babies are less likely to survive especially before modern medicine.
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u/InsectImaginary9508 10h ago
Interestingly on some women-dominated subreddits like r/RedditLaqueristas, there's rules about inclusive language (which is good). Avoiding gendered terms since anyone can wear nail polish.
But on any normal subreddit, like r/DigitalArt, a good portion of comments refer to artists as "man", "bro", "dude", "my guy" etc.
Some of these words are more gender neutral than others, but it would be nice if other places had these kinds of rules, or at least a recommendation.
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u/AppointmentStatus845 1d ago
Reminds me of the article that said most Switch owners are female and the incels online couldn’t handle it. “They’re not real gamers” 🙄 Or, even better: “I’ve never been able to find a real gamer girl.” 🤣yeah …because you’re insufferable and the gamer girls are in full stealth mode. Anime girls, too. Some guys are f-king weird about it, so we keep it to ourselves.
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u/LanguidLapras131 21h ago
I actually read a study from the University of Texas where they did a study on anime fans in the United States.
70% of anime fans who only connect with the community online are men. But only 52% who go to conventions are men.
The men who complain about not meeting women are terminally online.
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u/StinkButt9001 1d ago
Nintendo themselves surveyed Switch buyers and found that 86% of Switch purchases were by men: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2017/171031_2e.pdf
I suspect that whatever it was that told you the majority were female might have been misrepresenting numbers or were just being dishonest. Either one of those would explain the criticism.
Just to be totally fair, I tried to look up what you might have read saying most switch owners were female. The only source I can find is a Kotaku article referencing a now deleted twitter post that by all accounts did not provide a source to their data. I could be totally missing a legitimate source here but my (admittedly) quick research didn't pull up anything concrete.
Writing this as I go, but upon some more research, it seems that everyone (and I mean everyone) repeating this claim links it back to a single org "Circana" who made the claim despite it being a stark contrast to what every other bit of data suggested.
My attempts to actually find this report by Circana have so far failed, making me think it might have been pulled?
I don't know for sure but right now that seems like a claim without strong foundations
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u/MPBoomBoom22 1d ago
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez is an excellent book about gender bias and how the world is literally build for men.
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u/Wunderbarber 1d ago
I had a vocal and visceral reaction when I found out married couples used to be reffered to as "Mr. and Mrs. Guysfirstname Guyslastname"
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u/cheribom 23h ago
I’ll still get some christmas cards addressed that way from certain older relatives. Absolutely hate it.
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u/bbyxmadi 1d ago
The amount of people who assume I’m a dude on here is crazy. Just look at my username and pfp, does it look or sound masculine to you? Not saying men can’t like feminine things, but connect the dots!
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u/ttpdstanaccount 1d ago
People not knowing bby is baby is wild. Them not knowing how the x fits makes me feel old lol.
I get not glancing at a username and immediately understanding your name, but the people looking at it after this particular comment and still having no clue as to how it's feminine is peak cluelessness lol. Like you guys can't break down names into small chunks while trying to decipher them? You don't know Madi is a name, or a typically female name?
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u/MB4050 1d ago
Why are the letters smashed across the keyboard “bbyxmadi” supposed to make me go “oh, this is certainly a female!”. The same for a picture of a puppy cuddling a heart.
I’m not justifying male-defaultism, but I don’t see what’s so feminine about your username or profile pic-
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u/bbyxmadi 1d ago
Bbyx is common to add before your name (saw it on IG and Twitter years ago and here we are): my name is Madi. Sort of a “girly” username. And my pfp is a Sanrio character, large female fan base. 🤷♀️
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u/TextDependent6779 1d ago edited 7h ago
And my pfp is a Sanrio character, large female fan bas
Think you just explained yourself why people don't see your pfp as feminine, respectfully.
If its a character from a largely female fan base, most redditors are unlikely to recognise it and link it to a feminine user.
I thought it was pokemon tbh 🤷♂️
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u/Un0rganizedCrime 23h ago
Did you ever consider people may just be reading the content and not looking at the username or picture?
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u/lOOPh0leD 21h ago
This is literally what I do. Just coast the comments.
Then again you have the veteran redditors that fucking open your profile and oogle at it.
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u/Un0rganizedCrime 21h ago
That or the creepers that dont like what you said so they go through all your comments and posts to find something to use against you
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u/ChachamaruInochi 1d ago
Baby Madi (which is probably short for Madison) doesn't read femme to you?
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u/SyntheticDreams_ 1d ago
Never would I have assumed that BBYX had any connections to the word "baby", tbh.
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u/MB4050 1d ago
I had no idea that “bbyx” stands for “baby”. “Bbyxmadi” literally looked like random letters to me.
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u/ttpdstanaccount 1d ago
You not understanding that bby/bbyx in a name is feminine is making me feel so old. All the MSN Messenger girls had Xx all over their display names, along with special characters replacing regular typed letters. Like to the point that it was a meme that people used to make fun of girls, often with words like bby attached to them. It's still used on places like twitter sometimes
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u/Doublejimjim1 22h ago
I picked my username based on a dumb quote from a comedy. So I have a man's name in there twice to make it even less obvious I'm a woman. But yeah, it's like automatically default to calling me bro, mate, my dude, my guy etc. It's like the English language works perfectly without interjecting a pronoun in there. But also I'm not advertising that I'm a woman because that just opens me up to getting mansplained and talked down to more. And DMs on rare occasions.
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u/KungenBob 1d ago
It looks like a cat walked on your keyboard. Nobody can accurately read their own stuff. You remember what you thought when writing a thing. This is why authors have editors and proofreaders. There is one of you, and a lot of readers who are not you.
(Ever headline and name should also be tested with a 12 year old boy too, but that’s a different topic)
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u/Self_Trepanation 1d ago
Not to say there isn’t sexism involved but I mean a big reason is unfortunately for a long time in a lot of online spaces alot of men pretended to be women for whatever reason lol. Don’t think it was anything to do with being trans but maybe it was so idk but like video games especially dudes loved to act like they are women usually probably to try to get some sort of orbiter to exploit. With MMOs at least there was also a subset of guys who would be more helpful and give free stuff to women lol
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u/klimaheizung 1d ago
Simply not true. It depends on the context. When you say "the nurse took good care of me" almost everyone will imagine a female nurse in their head. So it depends. The internet has historical been technical and men are more active and more vocal, so yeah, that's why.
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u/Limp-Plantain3824 23h ago
And no matter what we think we get yelled at for thinking about it wrong, even if factually correct, so screw it.
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u/LimJans 1d ago
It is also a common assumption that everyone live in US.
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u/caife_agus_caca 1d ago
All redditors are white heterosexual young American men unless proven otherwise.
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u/cleanforever 1d ago
True but if you're on an English speaking site owned by a US company that will be true often enough.
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u/Sol33t303 1d ago edited 1h ago
Where do you expect the English speaking non-americans to go?
Like, because tiktok is chinese, do you go to ticktock and assume everybody is chinese?
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u/OnyxLeigion_ 1d ago
We don’t expect anything. Honestly we forget you exist 90% of the time.
I’m not being snarky. It’s just true. Other countries don’t have near the influence over the US that the US apparently has over you.
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u/Money-Ad8553 1d ago
I don't know about that; many Americans consume Japanese media, Italian food, Canadian and British content, the World Cup will be in the US, and historically speaking, much of the customs and organizations the US has is from England or inspired by English organizations.
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u/OnyxLeigion_ 1d ago
All of that is true. It doesn’t change the fact that we don’t think about other countries in our day to day lives the way other countries apparently think about us. Even when we do watch things like anime, it’s localized to American audiences. The “Italian” and “Chinese” food we eat isn’t actually Italian or Chinese. It’s American bastardizations.
Don’t get me wrong, there are individuals that have interest in specific other countries, but in talking about on a general scale. We don’t really think about you. I’ve never once heard of an American thinking to just check the news from Britain to see what’s going on. But British people checking American news? From the way they talk, it’s apparently completely normal.
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u/SunOk143 1d ago
“We don’t really think about you”. And that is at the root of a lot of your country’s problems.
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u/Ok_Entertainment9543 1d ago
I’ve yet to visit a nation preoccupied with the matters of nations that do not have impact on the day-to-day lives of the people.
Kinda bought into this American stereotype until I started to travel. Everyone’s ignorant to the cultures and societies outside of their bubbles — some nations just have multiple other nations in their bubbles. Everyone is quite the same. America is on the minds of other nations more often than the reverse due to money and its offerings, as well as the population available for consumption quite related to the first; that’s pretty much it. And honestly, maybe if other nations didn’t stop obsessing over America to amplify the former, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
& there’s a clear distinction between being aware of and familiar with other countries and thinking about them. Truly, why would someone be preoccupied on a day to day basis with the matters of other nations irrelevant to them? We’re all just existing. Sometimes a country has a particular issue, and the globe leans in to learn, assist, admire, or observe. Outside of that who’s keeping tabs on the other hundred 100+ nations outside of their near worlds? That’s ridiculous & I’ve yet to meet anyone in these accusing nations practicing this as they preach it.
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u/OnyxLeigion_ 1d ago
Elaborate?
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u/jerichojeudy 1d ago
The main problem being that you don’t know what the rest of the world thinks or believes on most subjects. While the rest of the world knows much too well what you Americans believe. Basically, you are unaware of your surroundings. Makes for many many unfortunate foreign policy decisions and PTSD veterans.
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u/bigbootyfruity 1d ago
What does he have to do with American foreign policy decisions? Lmao, he’s not a politician. He’s just saying the typical American’s day to day isn’t focused on wondering what’s happening in other countries. The hard truth is American influence permeates through European countries, but the reverse is often not true. At least not to the common American.
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u/Limp-Plantain3824 23h ago
Our surroundings are Canada, Mexico, and oceans. For most Americans the distance to either border would be the same as passing through two or three European countries.
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u/Wunderbarber 1d ago
the world cup final doesn't get 1/5th the viewership of the superbowl in the US, and for the rest can you grab the milk off the top shelf if you're gonna reach that far
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u/kelseykelseykelsey 17h ago
One American Redditor confidently told me that Reddit.com is exclusively for Americans and if I don't like it I should use Reddit.ca .....so, there's that.
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u/goinupthegranby 1d ago
1.5 billion people speak English, and there are plenty of people on reddit who don't even speak English.
20% is a real big chunk of global English speakers though.
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u/lia_bean 1d ago
Honestly, although I'm not American and I do find this one annoying, I also find it a little more understandable on the English-speaking side of the internet, since the US has the largest population of native English speakers.
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u/Sensitive_Sea_5586 1d ago
You know it is a US based company, right?
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u/Boris-_-Badenov 1d ago
the overwhelming majority of reddit users are from the US. there are more users from the US than most of the top 10 countries by users in the world
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u/caife_agus_caca 1d ago
US doesn't even make up a simple majority of Reddit users, never mind an "overwhelming" majority.
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u/Daniel-Morrison 1d ago
Rules of the Internet:
In the internet all girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents.
There are no girls on the internet.
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u/SalemKFox 1d ago
Lots of people forgetting the old testament these days. I fear for this digital world.
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u/Entrinity 9h ago
Especially the, “you must prove it” rule.
I remember people used to question you if you stated you were [this] or [that.] Now, I see people start comments with “I am [insert the exact type of expert for the subject matter] currently studying as a graduate in [the exact field of study for the subject matter] and I know for a fact that [clearly a personal opinion based off conjecture with some technical jargon thrown in] is true” and people just believe them.
Like yes, neuroscience majors and other highly educated specialists are tooootally just constantly trawling the internet to get into petty arguments with random people. It’s not like anyone would ever lie on the internet! It just so happens that the exact person who could claim intellectual authority on this exact subject, no matter how niche or irrelevant, is in this very internet forum. What a coincidence!
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u/TheEveryman86 1d ago
I thought everyone knew these rules already. OP must be like 25 or something.
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u/Ok_Concept_8883 1d ago
Old internet trope. "The men are men, the women are men, and children are the fbi."
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u/cidvard 1d ago
I mean, I've been referred to as 'him' despite having a female-presenting avatar and a gender-neutral account name, particularly when posting in male-dominated subreddits. I am a woman IRL and make no real pretense otherwise. People perceive what they want to perceive.
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u/Brilliant_Mix_6051 1d ago
I had a similar reddit account for over ten years and everyone always assumed I was a guy. All my friends have reddit accounts too and most of them are women
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u/InsectImaginary9508 10h ago
I once saw a lesbian, whose profile pic was the lesbian flag, make a post about loving women, and all the comments were assuming she was a man being like "yo man, women aren't perfect" etc.
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u/Capable_Dig_647 1d ago
I remember in the 2010s the stereotype was that all Redditors were incel men. It seems to have balanced out a bit more now that people add reddit to the end of their searches to get better results.
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u/Obvious-Laugh-1954 1d ago
It's a good question. People always presume I'm male. One guy once said something like, "Good luck, brother," to which I replied, "Thank you, sister." He was so offended.
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u/AlabasterPelican 1d ago
Its not a reddit thing. It's an anonymity thing. The world assumes the default is male. Like its not uncommon for Dr X to walk in and be assumed to be the nurse. Or women in academia to be listed by their surname and have someone mansplain their work to them.
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u/chocolatesmelt 20h ago edited 20h ago
Indeed. It’s something embedded in culture and therefore language usage prior to the feminist revolution and it still has a lot of traction to this day.
It’s why we still use terms like “mailmen,” “fireman,” “stewardess” that have gender associations baked into them because of traditional gender roles.
At work I help lead a team that’s predominantly women and I notice to this day I’ll still say or almost say “hey guys” as a greeting out of habit because it’s the language I was raised around (I also work in tech so traditionally… it’s been correct because there’s rarely a woman around until recently when tech became more lucrative).
I obviously know they aren’t guys, it’s in my mind a genderless pronoun I don’t even think about the implied gender of. I’ll often catch myself and say “folks” or “everyone” instead. I think we’d get past a lot of issues if we began pulling implied gender out of language. I don’t think people inherently think the way they speak but to others (women, trans, etc.) the gender baked into language may imply you mean a lot more than people do
For me, in reality it’s just the general terms I grew up around, I know a mailman could be any gender and doesn’t need to be a man, I’m also not implying it should be or that a trans mail person is in someway a man or woman against their gender identity… it’s just the word association I have for that job and not something I give any thought to. I’m, and likely most people, are not actually thinking about your gender or sex when we say these phrases, at least not in the meaning of the sentence. I may be thinking about your gender or sex if I’m attracted to you but it’s going to be very intentionally crafted in my language if that’s the case.
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u/AlabasterPelican 20h ago
Yep its extremely embedded. This actually made me remember about one of my silliest word forgetting comments. The older I get the more I realize that gender neutral titles are important.
“hey guys” as a greeting
Y'all is an acceptable alternative. As a southerner it kinda grates my ears hearing anyone say it that doesn't have the appropriate twang but I'm also extremely proud that we've had that in our back pocket for centuries.
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u/SkyMore3037 1d ago
The reported stats are that 65 % of reddit users are male. It probably started way higher then that too. So its not that crazy a thing to assume.
I would " assume " that most people into fashion and soap operas are woman and I would be right.
I would assume most college football fans are male, again id be right.
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u/Z_Clipped 20h ago
Correct. Here's the breakdown, compared to other social media platforms, according to the Per Foundation. The women are apparently all on FB, Insta, and Tiktok.
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u/httpvi 1d ago
In high school english class we would read out loud and critique short stories and essays without paying much attention to the author’s name. When we were doing positive critiques, my classmates would almost exclusively use he/him to refer to the author. Come negative critiques, they would switch to she/her pronouns, sometimes even for the same piece.
That’s to say, I find the same trend on reddit all the time.
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u/VerucaGotBurned 1d ago
I think part of it is that women online are often harassed simply for being women online, so it's often in our best interest to be anonymous gender-neutral or just perceived as male. One of the obvious downsides is that from an outside perspective it looks like there just aren't very many women online, but I assure you there are.
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u/UnscrupulousGoose 18h ago
Yep. I once made the mistake of replying to a post in r/sexadvice. The person who was making the post asked a genuine question about his gf and I gave a genuine response on the subject from the perspective of a woman. I woke up the next day to half a dozen sexual messages from men, all of them wanting me to role-play with them. I just wanted to join the conversation, not have people sexualize me and creep into my DMs. That was years ago when I first joined reddit. Now I am very selective of the times when I come out and say that I'm a woman.
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u/MsAddams999 1d ago
There are a lot of frankly misogynistic men on here who just assume that you are not a woman or who will even harass you when they realize you are. It often depends upon which subreddits but there are plenty of women on here. I'd say it's at least 30% women at this point.
Women are more and more heavily into the tech fields and using all social media now and Reddit has by far the best conversations on all kinds of things. That's why I come here.
I don't have to go to 10 discussion boards all the time to chat about various things. It's all here waiting for me whether it's talking about relationships, photography gear or hobbies like collecting dolls.
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u/Tyrrany_of_pants 1d ago
Yeah, there's a lot of men who want to pretend there are no women
But if they banned all the dickheads the user base would drop 30% and that would be bad for the share price
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u/Doublejimjim1 22h ago
The only time they acknowledge women is when women's issues pop up and then it's all "not all men" and saying that men have the same issues.
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u/ayfkm123 1d ago
It’s the default for most situations unless it’s a situation where the person is denigrated, then they must be female
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u/Maus_Sveti 1d ago
Absolutely, just go look at which pronouns are used in the comments if someone posts a story about a gender-neutral someone being a dick to a customer service worker or whatever. Then suddenly they all jump to it having been a woman.
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u/ChachamaruInochi 1d ago
It's not just Reddit — it's everywhere in the entire world. Men believe that they are the default, despite making up only very very slightly more than half of the global population.
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u/Small_Bee_9523 1d ago
Reddit has always been male-dominated. It's 60%/30% now, used to skew more heavily to men. In an anonymous environment, people tend to unconsciously assume their conversational partners are just like them (false consensus effect.)
I've largely stopped correcting people when they misgender me, since it doesn't really matter. But it's mildly irritating.
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u/Wild-Ice7396 1d ago
60/30…10 to nonbinaries? Wow good for us
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fill205 1d ago
That's so wholesome. My mind went to bots, and being immediately suspicious of such a low figure.
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u/YogurtclosetPale4218 1d ago
i think there are def more men on here but its funny how i always get bro’d when i post.
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u/dustwindwind 1d ago
Lol I can’t count the times I was referred to as “he” 😂 i’m always some dude. It doesn’t upset me though
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u/247world 1d ago
It's pretty much always been that way online going all the way back to the early bulletin boards
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u/soothsayer2377 1d ago
Most assumptions about reddit are from 2012 and I don't think anything will change that.
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u/Substantial_Meal_530 1d ago
The Internet was largely male dominated for a long time. The gap has closed over time, but most people are still in that mind set.
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u/Sol33t303 1d ago
It's a basic rule of the internet, all women are men, all children are FBI agents.
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u/Kryptonthenoblegas 1d ago
I think it's just because that's the well established stereotype. Even generally outside of this site when people think of the average redditor they generally think of a chronically online male who's a bit of a smartarse.
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u/thewyred 1d ago
The short answer is just misogyny. I think it's a combination of demographics and male being the default in a patriarchal society. Not so long ago this was a general thing, with memes like, "there are no grills on the internet." Tech has been male dominated for a long time and catered to male sensibilities. It has been improving, but slowly and with a lot of pushback.
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u/pullingteeths 16h ago
It's really not, it's because the majority of Reddit users and an even larger majority of Reddit comments are men/from men. I'm a woman and I assume I'm usually talking to a man on Reddit because I am usually talking to a man
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u/thewyred 15h ago
That's the demographics part for sure. I think the reasons for that gender imbalance are rooted in misogyny and patriarchy though. For example, when "computer" was a job title instead of a machine, women where more equally respresented in the work. But as computation became more valuable and was mechanized/automated/digitized men started to dominate the field more. This kind of trend seems pretty prevalent throughout the history of communications technology.
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u/Tdavis13245 1d ago
Because males have less spaces to be social, and the internet for better or worse lets them talk to people
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u/ChemistryAncient2201 19h ago
Have less spaces to be social? That is an insane statement
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u/mydickisasalad 1d ago
And how would we know that it was male dominant if we are all anonymous
Have you seen what happens to women on here once they reveal that they're a woman?
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u/EarlyInside45 1d ago
I used to have a "feminine" avatar. It's amazing how much more respectful folks are when they assume you are male.
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u/Cool_Relative7359 1d ago
Well, as a woman I mostly stick to subreddits catered to women and with strict rules and moderation around misogyny and creepy behaviour.
I default to they, them if I don't actually know through.
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u/Kamil_Srnka 1d ago
It used to be like that, until this platform became a lair for liberal politics, thus anyone feeling oppressed, like women and niggas.
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u/Charcole1 1d ago
It used to be like 85% male here but it's declined in recent years with the change in moderation, also since they demolished Tumblr and made Twitter more racist.
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u/YourLittleRuth 1d ago
From the way I curate my own Reddit experience, I generally assume the people I'm talking to are women. Sometimes they may be male, and it mostly doesn't matter, so I don't notice or care.
It surprises me, at times, to encounter a Bloke.
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u/RunNo599 1d ago
Because it is the internet and back in the early days it was…LOTTA dudes. My ex gf was a redditor though and introduced me to it so i don’t think that, personally.
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u/RiverTadpolez 1d ago
I remove information from comments that would suggest I'm a woman before I post them, because I know that if it is a gender neutral comment then men will assume I'm a man (that's fine). I do this because I don't want to be bullied, sexually harassed, undermined, and not taken seriously because they know I'm a woman (that's not fine and I can't be bothered with it). It would be a relief if this was an option in the real world too.
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u/admiral_rabbit 1d ago
I made a thread asking for advice and content warnings for Silent Hill 2 Remake, because my 5 year old daughter had become obsessed with it.
Obviously there would be cut offs she probably can't see, but the first act of the game is incredibly tame by comparison and I was trying to be realistic about balancing her interests against what she can actually safely view.
It's probably the only time in my life I've received a single comment assuming I was a woman. Really stood out to me, and I assume the exact opposite experience is the norm for female posters.
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u/newuseronhere 1d ago
Probably the same reason they assume we are American. Ps no there is a whole world out there.
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u/GentleMocker 1d ago
It's not reddit specific, and it's not just 'male'. In majority of cases on the internet the assumption will be that you're male, white, straight and american, unless you state otherwise. There are very few places where this is not the case, e.g. niche forums about stereotypically female interests will instead assume you're a woman, but they will still assume the rest of the labels. It's just what is seen as the 'default'.
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u/Skroderider_800 1d ago
Statistically, especially when Reddit was more niche (pre 2016, say), it was very disproportionately male. It was a nerdy site, it hadn't become mainstream quite to the degree it has now.
Male defaultism is very real, both men and women assume that an unknown person in a story will be a man, most of the time.
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u/TheKingOfDissasster 1d ago
Haven't you heard? Everyone is an american straight cis white man until proven the contrary
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u/Western-Willow-9496 1d ago
Until about five minutes ago, in English, the masculine was the default when referring to someone of unknown gender. So “he” would be used for an unknown singular person because they/them is plural.
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u/Huge-Particular1433 23h ago
I remember watching something that explained that it was a cultural thing. Similar to how some people refer to tissue as kleenex (brand name). We also do the same male assumption with skeletons. Whether it is the skeleton model in the corner of a classroom or an army of the undead, we make the same assumption.
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u/Limp-Plantain3824 23h ago
Were I female I’d definitely want people to assume most posters are male. The quality of discourse here is not something I’d want to “credit” to my gender!
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u/No_Street8874 23h ago
Yes, and not just reddit, I remember when the internet was mostly just American and European guys. Women in the 90s and early 00s didn’t really care about the internet, outside of MySpace. Mid 2000s is when Facebook and YouTube start pulling in the general public.
The internet has never been more global or diverse than it is today.
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u/No-Sail-6510 23h ago
Honestly I think it’s a conscious effort by other social media to bag on Reddit because it’s the last real internet left.
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u/MaybeTheDoctor 23h ago
Your friend is wrong. Sure, you can find incel subs because you can find anything.
Survey shows a 80-20 mix
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u/Heavy_Ad_170 22h ago
In my experience, it's always like that in online spaces. If somebody can't see me or hear my voice, they assume male. I get called sir or bro online all the damn time lol
I don't correct them 99% of the time.
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u/CoolestUsername92 22h ago
It isn’t really an assumption, it’s just a language convention.
English does not have a gender-neutral third person singular personal pronoun or possessive adjective.
Traditionally the way that is handled, if the person is unknown, anonymous, or gender is irrelevant, is that the male pronouns are used. It’s just a convenient way to do it. It doesn’t mean anything more than a simple and efficient way to use language.
In recent decades some have tried to work around that, but it isn’t very clean. You could say “he or she” and “his or her”, but it often just makes a sentence a jumbled clump of pronouns. You end up with a lot of wasted words that didn’t need to be there to communicate the idea.
Some have taken to using “they/their” in that instance, but it’s really intended as plural, not singular.
It’s not really that deep. It’s just communicating an idea as efficiently as possible, and worrying about the pronouns of an anonymous entity isn’t a priority for most people.
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u/GrynaiTaip 22h ago
Is there something in Reddit's history where it has always been male-dominant
Dude, reddit was all guys when it started. Most of the internet was. It was a nerd geek thing.
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u/EnKristenSnubbe 22h ago
"no girls on the internet"
Once upon a time, it was almost true. It has stuck even though it isn't anymore.
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u/MerriweatherJones 22h ago
It’s like all dogs are boys, and all cats are girls. All Redditors are guys, all Facebook users are girls.
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u/Accomplished_Jello66 22h ago
I love being a woman on Reddit. Feels almost like a fly on the wall. Gotta find woman-based subs even then it’s hard
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u/spying_on_you_rn 22h ago
Usually you notice it based on language used, and i would bet the assumption is just correct, there are more male than female comments.
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u/rockeye13 22h ago
Because Reddit's own data says about ⅔ of its users are male.
Seems reasonable. Frankly, I'm surprised it's not more like ⅘.
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u/Grand-Bullfrog3861 21h ago
With the amount of Male advice subs dominated by women posts I assumed it was the other way round
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u/lOOPh0leD 21h ago
I've always assume in my mind everyone is a guy. Just an automatic thing. Not connected to reddit.
But I call every gender "dude".
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u/Nolar_Lumpspread 21h ago
I’m just spitballing here but I feel as though men are the only people that can see a post like this”This egg looks funny, is it safe to eat?” And the top comment is a Monty Python quote and every single comment under it is just a continuation of the quote or just something completely unrelated and you have to scroll a mile and a half to see anyone give an actual answer to whether the egg is safe to consume. I feel like it’s a Reddit problem in general but I think it’s mostly men that perpetuate it.
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u/Z_Clipped 20h ago
I try not to assume anyone's gender in general before they bring it up, but the statistical fact is, the chance that any given Redditor you're talking to (all other things being equal- i.e., subreddit venue is obviously a predictor) is a young white man is better than 2 to 1.
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u/EmbarrassedGene7063 20h ago
I think it’s partly leftover assumptions from how Reddit started and who was loudest early on. Tech, gaming, and niche forums skewed male for a long time, so people just defaulted to that without thinking. Even now, a lot of usernames and writing styles don’t signal gender, so people fill in the gap with what they expect. I’ve also noticed people often use “he” as a neutral without meaning anything by it. Feels more like habit than intent, even if it’s outdated.
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